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Gigantic Octopus
Gigantic Octopus is a huge cephalopod of he North Atlantic Ocean. Significant sightings In 1802, the French malacologist Pierre Denys de Montfort in Histoire Naturelle Générale et Particulière des Mollusques, an encyclopedic description of mollusks, recognized the existence of two kinds of giant octopus. One being the kraken octopus, which Denys de Montfort believed had been described not only by Norwegian sailors and American whalers, but also by ancient writers such as Pliny the Elder. The second one being the much largercolossal octopus (the one actually depicted by the image) which reportedly attacked a sailing vessel from Saint-Malo off the coast of Angola. On November 30, 1896, a huge carcass was found washed up on Anastasia Beach, near St. Augustine, Florida. DeWitt Webb, a local medical doctor, examined and took several photographs of it. The specimen was 20 feet long, 4 feet high, and 5 feet wide. Its estimated weight was 5 tons. It had a pearshaped, pinkish body with a silvery cast and was covered with 3–6 inches of extremely tough connective tissue. The stumps of five arms were evident, and some of the detached arms, one of which was 28 feet long and 8 inches thick, were found lying several feet away. Some of the internal organs were still present. A storm carried the mass out to sea in early January 1897, but it reappeared 2 miles farther south, and Webb managed to haul it up to higher ground using horses, tackle, and windlass. He identified the remains as an octopus and sent descriptions, photos, and tissue samples to Yale cephalopod expert Addison E. Verrill. Verrill first identified the mass as a Giant squid (Architeuthis) but changed his designation to Gigantic octopus long enough to give it a scientific name; he then retracted that statement after looking more closely at Webb’s tissue samples and suggested the mass may have come from the nose of a Sperm whale (Physeter catodon). A blob of similar matter with five arms washed into Mangrove Bay on Bermuda in May 1988. Discovered by Teddy Tucker, it was a mass of tough, white, fibrous substance 8 feet long and about 3 feet thick. Tissue analysis: Fortunately, a sample from the 1896 stranding sent to William H. Dall at the Smithsonian Institution had been retained, though the bulk of it is now lost. Three analyses have been performed on this material: histological tests in 1963 by Joseph Gennaro, aminoacid analysis in 1986 by Roy Mackal, and electron- microscope and biochemical procedures in 1994 by Sidney Pierce. The first two analyses indicated the substance was connective tissue similar to that found in an octopus; the last suggested that both it and the 1988 Bermuda sample consisted of collagen—whale blubber in the first instance and the thick skin of a fish in the second. Probably only a sophisticated collagen electrophoresis test or amino-acid sequence analysis will resolve this discrepancy. Unfortunately, the Florida specimen may be too contaminated now to be tested successfully. Scientific names Octopus giganteus, given by Addison E. Verrill in 1897; Otoctopus giganteus, proposed by Michel Raynal in 1986. Possible explanations * A gigantic North Atlantic variety of octopus. The largest known species is the Giant Pacific octopus (Enteroctopus dofleini ), which can exceed a radial spread of 20 feet and a weight of 100 pounds. A smaller relative, E. megalocyathus, is found in the eastern South Pacific and South Atlantic in Chilean and Argentinan waters. Michel Raynal has suggested that a giant form of cirrate octopus, such as Cirroteuthis, might be involved. * The spermaceti tank from a sperm whale’s head, which has a baglike shape, weighs several tons and is rich in collagen. * A decomposed Ocean sunfish (Mola mola) because of its unusual shape. The heaviest of all bony fishes, with a maximum weight of 4,400 pounds, the sunfish looks like a big head with long dorsal and anal fins. The scaleless body is covered with thick, elastic skin. It grows to a maximum length of nearly 11 feet and is common in warm and temperate waters of the Atlantic. However, a sunfish does not come close to matching the description of the original specimen. Category:It's Something Category:Cryptozoology Category:Cryptids Category:Cephalopods Category:Mollusks Category:Aquatic Creatures Category:Oceanic Cryptids